Sesame Noodles with Cucumber and Spring Onion

What it is

Cold wheat noodles in a sesame dressing: tahini whisked with soy sauce, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, a little sugar, grated garlic and ginger and some chilli flakes, loosened with warm water until it pours like thick cream. Edamame cooks in the noodle pot. Then come thin half-moons of cucumber, plenty of spring onion and toasted sesame seeds on top.

The only heat is one pot of boiling water and one small dry pan. The rest is whisking and slicing, and you eat it cold or at room temperature, so it's lovely on a hot day and happy to wait in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch. Put the big bowl in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves.

It's Protein Champion number fifteen, and the champion turns up twice: ground into tahini, and whole on top. Sesame's protein story has a twist, and that twist is the reason the edamame is here.

Why you should eat it

Here's the short version, before anyone files tahini under 'just a dip'. USDA FoodData Central lists 17 g of protein per 100 g of tahini, with 9.3 g of fiber in that same 100 g, and this dressing uses half a cup. Frozen edamame brings 11.2 g of protein and 4.8 g of fiber per 100 g, same database. The card below adds up the bowl. Full honesty: the champion isn't the biggest protein source here. By my arithmetic the edamame and the noodles each bring a bit more protein than the sesame, and sesame's real story is its amino acid mix, coming up while the water boils. Tahini is also 53.8 g fat per 100 g, most of it unsaturated, so this is a rich bowl. The noodles bring most of the carbs, and the soy sauce 93% of the pot's sodium.

Tips

• The seeds on top get the photos. The tahini does the work: of the pot's sesame protein, about 20 g comes from the tahini and about 3 g from the seeds (USDA records 170189 and 170150). Don't skimp on the half cup.
• Edamame, NDSU Extension explains, are soybeans harvested young, so soy, the plant behind champion number nine's tofu, is back as a teammate. NDSU cooks frozen shelled edamame for 4 minutes, then drains it and rinses it cold, which is exactly what happens here.
• Allergy, said plainly: sesame, soy and wheat are all on this plate, and all three are on the FDA's list of nine major food allergens (sesame since 1 January 2023). With a sesame allergy, a little matters: a position paper from DGAKI, the German allergy society, reports that one teaspoon of tahini (4 g) caused objective symptoms in 93% of sesame-allergic patients in the food challenges it cites. If anyone at your table has a food allergy, ask before you cook this.

Substitutions

• Dried wheat noodles or spaghetti: Egg-free udon or somen, cooked to the packet time A different chew. Somen are salted in the dough (USDA 168908: 1,840 mg of sodium per 100 g dry), so go easy on the soy sauce. The card is built on dry pasta.
• Frozen shelled edamame: 2 tins of chickpeas, drained and rinsed (USDA puts one tin at 254 g drained), stirred in with the cucumber, no boiling needed Still a lysine teammate: cooked chickpeas carry 6.69 g of lysine per 100 g of protein (USDA 173757), against edamame's 6.27. USDA lists 7.04 g of protein, 6.3 g of fiber and 212 mg of sodium per 100 g of rinsed tinned chickpeas (173801), against 11.2 g, 4.8 g and 6 mg for frozen edamame, so the fiber and the sodium go up. The soy sauce still carries soy. The card is built on edamame.
• Soy sauce: Low-sodium soy sauce, same 3 tbsp By USDA 172473, the bowl's sodium drops from about 706 to about 431 mg.

Storage

Cold noodles are leftovers like any other. The UK Food Standards Agency says to get cooked food into the fridge within one to two hours, keep the fridge between 0 and 5 °C, and eat leftovers within 48 hours. The dressing thickens as it chills, so loosen it with a spoonful of water. Keep the toasted seeds in a dry jar and scatter them on just before you eat, so they stay crunchy.

While it cooks: the short blue crayon

Noodles in, water rolling, five minutes with nothing to stir. Pull up a chair.

Protein is a chain of smaller pieces called amino acids. Nine of them your body can't make, so food has to bring them. The internet loves sorting plant proteins into winners and losers by whether they 'have' all nine. In USDA FoodData Central's tahini record, sesame protein carries every one. What changes from food to food is how much of each.

To judge 'how much', you need a measuring line. FAO, the UN's food and agriculture agency, drew one in 2013 (case one has that story): for older children, teens and adults, each gram of protein should carry 48 mg of lysine and 23 mg of the sulfur pair, methionine and cysteine.

Held up against that line, counting protein the way FAO asks, tahini clears eight of the nine, from leucine at 106% to tryptophan at 281%. The sulfur pair sits at 196%. Lysine falls short, at 57%. The wheat noodles sit on sesame's side of the table, shorter still at 44%. Edamame goes the other way: lysine at 131%, the sulfur pair a touch under at 97%.

I come from early-childhood education, so here's the picture I'd pin on the classroom wall: a box of crayons. The drawing needs nine colours. Sesame's box has all nine, most of them plenty, but the blue crayon is a stub. The noodles' blue is an even smaller stub. Edamame turns up with a box full of blue. Pass a few blues across the table and the sky gets coloured in.

By my arithmetic, sesame and noodles alone reach 49% of the lysine line. Add the edamame and the plate climbs to 78%.

The picture stops in two places. Kids share crayons at one table, at one moment; your body doesn't have to. Mariotti and Gardner, who reviewed the evidence on vegetarian protein, found no evidence yet that plant proteins need their partner in the same meal: a reasonable variety over the day looks fine. Handy, because 78% is still under the line, and your other meals can finish the drawing. And counting crayons isn't drawing. These shares are counted in the food, before digestion takes its cut, and no study I found measured how much of sesame's lysine a human body absorbs.

So, in one line: sesame brings plenty of every essential amino acid except lysine, edamame brings the lysine, and the rest of your day can close the gap.

Case one: the scorecard every protein gets measured against

Case one has no volunteers, because it's a rulebook. In 2011 FAO, the UN's food and agriculture agency, gathered an expert panel in Auckland, New Zealand, to settle how protein quality should be measured, from infants to adults. Their report came out in 2013.

What they did: they recommended a new score, DIAAS, to replace the older PDCAAS. The idea fits in one breath. Take each essential amino acid in a gram of protein, count only the part your gut absorbs, and compare it with a reference amount set by age. The one for older children, teens and adults is the line from 'While it cooks'.

What they said: treat amino acids as individual nutrients, and measure absorption at the end of the small intestine, in humans if possible, otherwise in growing pigs, then growing rats. Their worked example, wheat with peas and a little whole milk powder, scored 82 for older children, teens and adults, held back by lysine.

For your plate: even that mix, milk and all, ran short on lysine first. Sesame's 57% is the same story told louder.

Where it stops: my percentages aren't a DIAAS. I found no study that measured how much of sesame's protein people absorb, so sesame can't get a true score yet. Tahini is roasted, and for processed foods FAO asks for the lysine still usable after processing, which USDA doesn't give. The report itself says both ways of measuring digestibility can have important limitations. An honest rulebook.

Case two: young footballers in João Pessoa

Twenty semi-professional footballers in João Pessoa, Paraíba, boys aged 16 to 18, training six days a week, ten months into their season. A Federal University of Paraíba team split them at random for 28 days. Ten ate 40 g a day of crushed, briefly roasted white sesame, a variety bred by Embrapa, Brazil's agricultural research agency, mixed with 17 g of honey, half before training and half after. Ten got a look-alike paste of honey, maltodextrin, cow's milk and caramel colouring.

What they found, group against group at the end: the sesame boys had 5% lower creatine kinase, a blood marker of muscle damage, about half the MDA, a marker of oxidative damage (0.7 against 1.3 µmol/L), and more vitamins A and E in their blood. Their aerobic capacity rose about 17% from their own start, but it didn't beat placebo, and neither did inflammation, which fell in both groups. Nobody reported stomach trouble.

For your plate: a bowl of this carries about 34.5 g of sesame, close to their 40 g, but they ate theirs daily for four weeks, around training. And the trial didn't measure muscle or strength.

Where it stops: twenty teenage boys, one team, one season. The groups differed in creatine kinase before they started; there's no registration, no sample size calculation and no stated blinding of the people measuring; and the placebo had milk in it. The first author had a CAPES-Brazil scholarship, and the team declares no conflicts. A small Brazilian hint, and a sweet one.

Case three: sesame and cholesterol, the first big pool

Australian researchers at Griffith University pooled 10 controlled trials, 908 adults in India, Iran, Sweden, Taiwan and Australia, a mixed crowd from people with type 2 diabetes or high blood fats to healthy women. Five trials used sesame oil; five used whole or ground seeds (25 to 50 g a day), sesame powder or an extract capsule. They ran 4 to 10 weeks.

What they found: overall, total cholesterol and LDL showed no significant change. Triglycerides, another blood fat, dropped 0.24 mmol/L (about 21 mg/dL), clearly only in the oil trials. In the seed group, the form closest to tahini, nothing moved significantly. Their verdict: insufficient evidence that sesame lowers cholesterol.

For your plate: if a jar of tahini ever gets sold to you as a cholesterol fix, this pool doesn't back the label. Eat it for the flavour, the protein and the fiber.

Where it stops: few trials, very different people, doses and durations, and results that varied a lot. Most trials didn't control what else people ate, only English-language papers were searched, one big oil trial supplies most of the 908 people, and the seed group mixes seeds with capsules. No specific funding, no conflicts declared. If you're managing your cholesterol, your doctor is the right person to talk this through with.

Case four: the newer pool, and why a capsule isn't a bowl

In 2025 a team from two Iranian medical universities pooled 13 randomized trials, 521 adults with average ages from 32 to 61, most of them living with a condition such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure or overweight. Most trials were in Iran and ran 4 to 12 weeks, testing sesame oil, capsules of sesamin (a sesame compound), sesame meal capsules, seeds, powder and bars.

What they found: HbA1c, a long-run blood sugar marker, came down, rated moderate certainty, but all three trials behind it used sesame oil or sesamin capsules in people with type 2 diabetes. Two inflammation markers, CRP and IL-6, came down too. Cholesterol didn't change significantly, and when sesame was eaten as food, cholesterol, LDL, triglycerides and CRP all stayed put. Weight, waist and blood pressure didn't budge.

For your plate: the good news came mostly from oil and capsules. A bowl of noodles is food, and as food, sesame didn't move those numbers in this pool.

Where it stops: few trials and few people, mixed doses and forms, mostly one country, and several outcomes rated low or very low certainty. Their 'food' group even includes oil and some capsules, and the results come in a unit that can't be turned back into a lab number. No specific funding, no declared interests. If you're managing blood sugar, talk any change through with your doctor.